


Shadows

by Lynnearline



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, F/M, alternate universe - skyrim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 20:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4579506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynnearline/pseuds/Lynnearline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a modern day Skyrim universe, Laura Hollis is a prodigy investigative journalist on the case of a trail of murders. She's still really gay though, don't worry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

"You know you can't run from this."

       "I'm well aware. May I know who asked for this to happen though?"

       "The contract does not allow me to tell you. I thought you would know that."

       "You forget most things when your main point of concentration is hiding from shadows."

       "Do you regret running?"

       "No."

/////

Laura opens up her laptop and examines the news reports for the day. Thankfully, nothing has occurred since the murder last Wednesday.

“Is your name Laura Hollis?” A voice sounded from behind her right shoulder, causing her to jump. Laura turns around, and is met with a face that must have been sculpted by Hephaestus himself, because the girl looking down at her had the jawline of an angel.

Laura is stunned, and she prevents herself from seeming like a fool by nodding her head. She reads the girl’s name tag, eyes straining to read the small frilly print.

_Carmilla._

The waitress sets down Laura’s cocoa with a smirk and walks away - she must know she’s paralyzed Laura like she must do with so many others; how could she not?

 _Wow. I’ve got to come in here more often._ Laura thinks as she takes a sip of her cocoa. She scrolls through the reports for an insubordinate amount of time until she bores of the lack of news. She checks the clock, surprised by the time.

_11:43 pm_

Laura shakes her head, she forgot how enveloped she can become in her hunt for leads on the murders. She gets up from her seat, legs aching from the lack of movement for God knows how long. She picks up her laptop and puts it in her bag, stretching before throwing away her empty cocoa cup. Laura exits the shop with a wave to the cashier; a ginger with long curly hair who had politely said goodbye to her. Laura makes a mental note to come here as often as possible; the cocoa is fantastic and the people here seem great overall.

Laura begins briskly walking to her apartment - she needs to get home before the curfew because she still looks like an adolescent due to her height, and it would be an inconvenience to have to convince the police that she actually is an adult (it’s happened before). Since this is a relatively safe area to walk in there isn’t a true reason to hurry, but she feels like she’s being watched, which is usually not a good sign.

As Laura passes by the third inconspicuous alleyway that night, she notices a shadow flit by. She stops, slightly terrified, but mostly curious. It looked too black to be a regular shadow, and on nights of the murders there were always reports of seeing abnormally dark shadows. Laura turns to enter the alleyway, but realizes that is it completely empty and it ends about 20 feet away. Confused, she turns back and heads down the street, watching the rooftops as she walks until she reaches her apartment complex. She concludes that Danny and the rest of her companions who live in the complex with her and Laura are asleep since the lobby is empty, and treads softly to her room. Upon entry, she kicks off her shoes and collapses on her bed, abnormally tired since it was a slow day. Laura still can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched.

/////

Laura awakens to a loud fist pounding on her door at 6 am, and Danny walks in seconds later.

“Hollis, you are not going to believe this. Well, you will, but you won’t want to.” Danny pauses. “There was a murder last night. A Dunmer named Vivec, aged 23, gunshot wound with no bullet to be found.” Laura shoots up from the fetal resting position she was in and runs a hand through her hair. “Police think it happened around 12 am last night. They’ve closed off the area, but we have authority to investigate.” Laura rises from her bed, instantly awake, even without caffeine.

“Let’s go.”

/////

Upon arrival of the scene, it doesn’t look too bad. As Laura steps inside the small house, she notices there’s barely any blood on or near the body, and there’s only one wound - presumably caused by a gunshot due to the bullet sized hole directly through the heart. The murderer must have been a great shot, and the lack of a bullet in the body or on the ground means it was composed of pyrite that was given the property of decomposition. There’s a bullet sized hole in one of the wooden walls, which means the bullet must have been fired from a powerful gun. That also means that the murderer knew exactly where the victim would be standing as well as when. These walls don’t allow for heat vision to be possible, and there are no cameras anywhere unless they were taken down prior to the event. Laura steps outside and looks for potential places the shot could have been fired, and discover that the only place the shot could have been fired from is a hill about 100 feet away. There aren’t any cameras in this area of the city that could have captured any evidence, so there’s no telling if the shot actually came from there. The angle the bullet took through the wall seems to be the match of one that was fired from maybe 10 feet down the hill, and Laura concludes it must have been shot from there.

Laura reports her findings to the chief of police, who is about as dull as a child’s scissors so she’s not sure why she has to do it, and gets in her car to head to The Sanctuary. She is immediately greeted with the comforting smell of freshly baked cookies and the pleasant warmth that a small bakery gives off. She orders cocoa from a different ginger, their name tag reading ‘LaFontaine”(Laura overheard the long haired ginger calling LaFontaine by gender neutral pronouns the first time she came here, but she’ll remember to ask later). She sits at the table she did yesterday; next to the window where she can watch the masses walk by. People-watching has always been one of Laura’s favorite things. Imagining their stories and trying to figure out exactly why they’re dressed the way they are, why they could be walking with a slight limp, why they dyed half of their hair one color and half another color. It’s a calming, cleansing technique for her since her mother and her did it most places they went when she was young.

Laura snaps out of her reverie when her cocoa is placed on her table with a soft tap. She looks up to see the same face she was stunned by the day prior, but there is something different about it. The cockiness that was there yesterday has been replaced by a fallen expression.

“Thank you, Carmilla.” Laura manages to say as the girl walks away. She immediately tenses, snapping her head around to face Laura. Carmilla gives her a questioning look before looking down at the tag on her chest, visibly relaxing.

“Sorry, I’m somewhat shaken up because of what happened last night.” Carmilla recovers. She offers Laura a small smile and turns back around, disappearing into the back of the cafe. Laura shrugs off the odd encounter. Anybody would be nervous today, a murder is no light thing. She pulls out her laptop and opens up her word document that has the information all of the murder cases this year. She types up the details from the murder, and begins looking for similarities between all of the incidents. Her mentors for investigative journalism taught her to look for any similarities; bullet type, victim name similarities, hair color, ethnicity, location, even similarities in dental care. Laura scrolls through all of the murders that have occurred this year, which she’s only nine months into, and notices similar reports. On every night, there has been a sighting of a dark shadow, which Laura had seen. She shivers at the thought of being so close to a potential murderer, if that’s what it is. The only other similarity between the cases is...their race. All of the victims have been of the Dunmer ethnicity.

Laura takes a sip of her fast-cooling cocoa as she opens up a Google search tab. She isn’t sure how many Dunmer are left; they’ve been in so many conflicts with themselves that they have practically killed themselves off, and what murders they haven’t committed others have. The Dunmer would be the second race to go extinct - the first being the Argonians who lived on the sea. They were all about naval power, and when they went to war with the Altmer thousands of years ago, they lost somehow. No person alive knows how exactly they lost their battles, and no books were written about the conflict.

Laura searches for any living Dunmer, and spends an hour looking until she decides to check prison rosters for potential Dunmer inmates. She begins by searching prisons near her location, starting with one in Toronto. It has one of the higher security protocol systems in the country, so she assumes one of them could be kept there. She scans the roster, focusing on the ethnicity column of it, until she comes across a single name.

**Name: Erandur**

**Ethnicity: Dunmer**

**Age: 36**

**Crime: Attempted murder of wife, Daynas**

**Sentence: Life in prison, parole after 10 years**

Laura closes her laptop, and swiftly packs it into her bag. She stands up, and turns to wave at the owner, but there isn’t anyone at the counter. She throws the rest of her cocoa away - she hadn’t finished it before it became too cold. She enters her car, a simple red Honda Civic that had been a graduation gift from her father, and types the address to the prison into her GPS.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this six months ago, but I lost inspiration. So here it is, revamped (hahahhh puns). If you have any questions or whatever, send 'em to lynnearline.tumblr.com


End file.
